Douglas Cohn-Eleanor Clift: Cheney is no Churchill

Monday

Apr 27, 2009 at 12:01 AM

WASHINGTON — It's not unusual for a former president to defend his legacy, but to have a former vice president actively making the rounds on his own behalf is highly unusual. But then, Dick Cheney wasn't an ordinary vice president. He was the overseer for a legacy president who was groomed and selected for the job but so inexperienced in the ways of the world that his biggest backers, beginning with his parents, felt he needed adult supervision.

WASHINGTON — It's not unusual for a former president to defend his legacy, but to have a former vice president actively making the rounds on his own behalf is highly unusual. But then, Dick Cheney wasn't an ordinary vice president. He was the overseer for a legacy president who was groomed and selected for the job but so inexperienced in the ways of the world that his biggest backers, beginning with his parents, felt he needed adult supervision.

It's hard to believe now that President Bush's poll ratings are so low, but Bush brought the charm to the Bush-Cheney administration while Cheney from the start acted as the enforcer, the dark influence that earned him the moniker, Darth Vader.

Bush had his high moments, and his lows, but Cheney never changed. He never had a kind word for the Bill of Rights, or any kind of rights for that matter, and he viewed international law as an unwarranted infringement of U.S. sovereignty.

Cheney justified his extreme views under the auspices of national security. The 9/11 attacks gave Cheney and his allies throughout the administration the opening they needed. When frightened, people choose safety over freedom, which is one of the reasons the tactics of the past eight years received so little scrutiny.

Top congressional leaders, the so-called Gang of Four, briefed after 9/11 by CIA director George Tenet and his deputy about enhanced interrogation techniques, did not voice any objection.

Without staff support and denied the ability to even take notes, the lawmakers were flying blind, they say, and didn't fully grasp the extent to which the administration had twisted the law along with American principles.

Besides burnishing his legacy, Cheney is positioning himself as defender of the nation. He's not at all subtle about it. In interviews with CNN and Fox News, he says that when President Obama retreats from the policies and practices of the Bush administration, he puts the nation in jeopardy. Cheney is setting up Obama in the event of a future attack so he can say, "I told you so."

The way Cheney views his role is that he is performing a service by alerting the politicians and the people to the threats that are out there, just as the great British leader of the last century, Winston Churchill, repeatedly warned of the Nazi threat years before his countrymen would listen to him. Churchill was out of power and out of favor in political circles in the decade leading up to World War II.

He called this period his "Wilderness Years." Then Germany invaded Poland, followed by the Netherlands, Belgium and France, all of which forced the resignation of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and made way for Churchill. Chamberlain had been so eager to avoid war that his very name is equated with appeasement.

Churchill was 66 years old when he became prime minister in 1940, eager to lead his country, indeed the Western powers, through the conflagration that he had so long worried would occur. His time had come, and his leadership throughout the war along with his rhetorical gifts ensured him a prominent place in the history books. Cheney turned 68 in January of this year, and is surely aware of the parallels between himself and Churchill, the tirelessness in the face of critics warning of potential threats, the disrespect they suffered from their countrymen, the ultimate vindication that was Churchill's and could someday be Cheney's.

Still, it's doubtful that even his most stalwart supporters look at Cheney and see Churchill. Churchill was a defender of rights, freedom and strength. Cheney is a defender of strength. And with the Republican Party at its lowest ebb in some time, Cheney's wilderness period is just beginning. Dick Cheney is no Winston Churchill.

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